Adding mods to your ARK server

Intro

Adding mods to your ARK server is a fairly simple process. That being said it can be quite time consuming if the addons you're uploading are large files.

Step 1 - Downloading mods

Open up Steam on your computer.

Hover over 'Community' and then select Workshop from the dropdown menu.

You then want to search for ark, and then select ARK: Survival Evolved from the search dropdown. This should then take you to the workshop centre for ARK:SE.

Browse through various mods. When you find one you like, simply click the subscribe button.

Steam will then start downloading this content, which you can see on your downloads section. Once downloaded, you'll need to open up ARK and wait for the mods to initialize. This shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes. After that you can close down your game.

Step 2 - Archive the mods ready for upload

Proceed to navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\ARK\ShooterGame\Content\Mods if running a 64 bit copy of Windows, or C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\ARK\ShooterGame\Content\Mods if you're running a 32 bit copy of Windows.

Select / highlight the mod ID folders, along with there modid.mod file. Then right click, go to send to -> Compressed (zip) archive.

Once you've got the zip file created you may move onto the next step.

Step 3 - Uploading mods to the server

For files under 100mb in size

Login to the game control panel.

Navigate to your game servers overview.

Open the file manager and navigate to ShooterGame -> Content -> Mods. If the Mods folder doesn't exist you will need to create it by clicking on create folder.

Now you're in the Mods folder, you'll need to click on upload -> select the newly made zip file you made containing the mods you downloaded -> click upload, and then wait for the upload to complete successfully.

Once the upload is complete, please click the extract / unzip icon to the right of the file, found alongside the rename and download icon.

For files over 100mb in size

To install these you will need to use a process called FTP. FTP is a way of connecting to your server to upload and download large files. To use FTP you will need to first download a program called Filezilla, a link to the download can be found here;

You will need to download the Client version to your computer and install it. From here you will need your connection details, which are as follows;

+ Host: Your server IP without the port on the end (Example 185.38.148.10:27015 - your host is the part in the bold)
+ Username: Your control panel username that you use to login with.
+ Password: Your control panel password that you use to login with.
+ Port: 8821

Login to Filezilla using the information above

Navigate to ShooterGame -> Content -> Mods. If the Mods folder doesn't exist you will need to create it by clicking on create folder.

Now you're in the Mods folder, you will need to upload your mods. Simply drag and drop the zip folder into that directory and you should see a green bar at the bottom telling you the files are transferring.

When it says it is completed you can close down Filezilla

You will now want to navigate to the file location on your Control Panel and unzip it by clicking the icon to the right of the file, found alongside the rename and download icon.

Step 4 - Activating the mods on server startup

Go back to the game server overview page.

Click on command line manager.

Click on new.

Set a name for the new command line ie. 'Custom ARK startup'.

Check the checkboxes found down the left side next to SessionName and ServerAdminPassword, and then set values for them in the boxes to the right of them
(The SessionName is your server's name in the server list, and the ServerAdminPassword is the RCON / admin password. These are the only 2 essential options you need, anything else is down to what you would like to have set)

Now, at the bottom you should see an option with a ? and then an empty box, waiting to be filled. This is where we add the mod options (make sure the checkbox on the left is checkeD) like so..
GameModIds=modIDhere,modIDhere?ActiveMods=modIDhere,modIDhere

Click save.

Then finally click select at the far right of the newly made command line.